Post #3143597
2026-05-21 19:52 UTC
Replies (6)
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@thief_of_fire@infosec.exchange 2026-05-21 20:43
@odr_k4tana@infosec.exchange @Gargron@mastodon.social I mean you're both painting with too broad of strokes in your generalizations and missing wide swathes of populations while neither of you is technically wrong about the specific users you're talking about. Usability is a spectrum and creating a one-size-fits-all UX is an antipattern no matter how much or little it abstracts away decision making possibilities from the user. Open standards, data, and interoperability enable these experiences for the whole spectrum. MySpace was a great example because you didn't have to understand HTML/CSS to use it, but if you wanted to understand it then you could use it to personalize your page, if you didn't care one bit about learning any of it but still wanted to personalize your page then it opened a market for templates and style generators with better usability, and if you had no interest in any of that then the app was no less usable.
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@geos@toot.community 2026-05-21 21:22
@odr_k4tana@infosec.exchange @Gargron@mastodon.social I remember in 1980 thinking I might be wasting my time programming because it was getting so easy I assumed everyone would be doing it soon and there would be no future in it. What I did not account for is most people could do it, but didn't want to. The thing vibe coding is missing is the same thing the 4GL and GUI revolution missed. If Bob in Accounting whips up a useful app that gets adopted. Bob the Accountant is on the hook for supporting it forever. Good luck Bob.
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@me@social.jlamothe.net 2026-05-22 00:20
@odr_k4tana@infosec.exchange @Gargron@mastodon.social Yes, it's necessary to have an interest. It's also necessary to have the tools to explore that interest readily available. More and more, consumer device manufacturers are doing their damndest to deny people the latter. They call this "progress". I would likely not have learned to program if I grew up today.
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@notthebee@tilde.zone 2026-05-22 08:12
@odr_k4tana@infosec.exchange @Gargron@mastodon.social My parents come from a generation of people who had to learn to do their own stuff – you had to be a bit of a carpenter, a bit of a plumber, a bit of a car mechanic, a bit of a farmer, a bit of a tailor. It wasn't a question of pride or hobby or interests, it was a quesiton of self-reliance and survival – most people didn't have the means to bring their clothes to a professional tailor or drop their car off for an oil change. In my generation, people had to learn how to use a computer and fix some common problems – yes, even people who weren't interested in tech or programming. Not knowing how to use a computer was akin to not being able to drive a car – it meant that you were always dependent on somebody else to help you. My problem with modern computer interfaces is not that they're making things too accessible – my problem is that this simplicity comes at a cost. You can only obfuscate and dumb things down to a certain point before basically making it so that using your product doesn't require the user to have even the most basic knowledge of computer interfaces. Before you know it, you've raised a generation of people who don't know how to fix the simplest of issues with their software (let alone hardware). If "reinstalling Windows" was the oil change of my generation (you could probably do it, but it's messy, and you don't have the time), people who grew up with modern dumbed down mobile OSes would have their car towed because they left the handbrake on, and when told, would ask you "what's a handbrake?". Yes, learning how to work with computers takes time and effort, it requires learning a new skill – but so does everything in life – reading a book, cooking, driving a car, playnig a videogame. I think eliminating any possible friction and asking nothing of the user in terms of skill, just because "not everyone is interested in tech, people just want to get on with their life" is akin to refusing to learn how to cook or drive. It makes you dependent, and in our isolated and lonely modern world, most likely you will be dependent on big tech companies like DoorDash and Uber (and with computing – Google, Anthropic and OpenAI), rather than your family and friends. Personal computers are as ubiquitous and crucial in our lives as food and transport, and in my opinion, there's no getting around it – you *have* to learn it whether it's your interest or not, just for the sake of survival.
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@raphaelmorgan@disabled.social 2026-05-23 02:43
@odr_k4tana@infosec.exchange @Gargron@mastodon.social seconding at least "You are/were interested in it and actively pursued it." I had no more access to tech than the average lower middle class kid who grew up in the 2000s, and mostly had no idea how computers worked until my Twitter circles offered Mastodon as a liferaft, and then my fedi circles offered Linux, and then I had Tech Issues that I kept having to look up and solve. I sought a path away from the technofascism I was raised in and I found it--others can do the same.
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@Robotistry@fediscience.org 2026-05-23 18:55
@odr_k4tana@infosec.exchange @Gargron@mastodon.social I have been and continue to be interested in tech. I miss the customization options for the early Macs - delicate blue and white menu bar detailing and even special patterns for scroll bars. But I have long covid, and every time someone pushes a user interface change I get pounding headaches from trying to adapt to it. I cannot emphasize how much I wish someone would build a device whose user interface changes were guaranteed to happen *only* when there were *no* alternatives and whose feature updates consisted of "we fixed some broken stuff on the back end, no new functions that aren't opt-in, we promise." I crave a non-existent utopian world where I can buy an electronic device that's the equivalent of a multimeter: I pay once, and I swap out the batteries occasionally, and I use it until I don't need it any more, and *nothing about it changes*.